Edinburgh's Morrisons stores to lead the way in UK-wide zero waste drive

Edinburgh’s supermarket shoppers will be the guinea pigs for a UK-wide trial of a scheme by Morrisons to slash its impact on the environment through a massive recycling programme.

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Morrisons has announced plans for its six major units across the capital to be “zero waste” stores which aim to recycle all packaging and unsold food by 2025.

The supermarket will also introduce recycling points for customers for products not typically collected on bin days, including wrappers, empty crisp packets and face masks.

All six major Morrisons stores in Edinburgh will trial the zero waste scheme

Bosses said if the trials in six stores in Edinburgh are successful, they will roll the format out to all 498 supermarkets across the UK over the next year. as they seek to increase their green credentials.

The trials are in partnership with Nestle, which will be responsible for recycling soft plastics for the first time in the UK, with no waste shipped to other countries for processing – reducing mountains of waste and reducing both firms’ carbon footprint.

Store waste will be sorted by staff in storage rooms, including soft and hard plastics, cardboard, food waste, green waste, PPE, tins, cans and foils.

To combat food waste, the supermarket said it will also offer more unsold goods through its Too Good To Go app, where surplus food is sold at a heavy discount.

Morrisons hope to halt the blight caused by plastic waste

Extra efforts will also be made to distribute the food to local communities, it added, as part of the firm’s commitment to assisting those most in need of support.

Jamie Winter, sustainability procurement director at Morrisons, said the scheme should see a dramatic rise in recycling coincide with a major drop in general waste.

He said: “We believe that we can, at a stroke, enable these trial stores to move from recycling around 27 per cent of their general waste to over 84 per cent, and with a clear line of sight to 100 per cent.”

He added: “All waste collected in our stores will be recycled here in the UK – we will not reprocess anything abroad. If we’re successful, we’ll roll this zero waste store concept out across the UK as fast as we can.”

Helen Bird, strategic technical manager at recycling charity Wrap, said resources for recycling plastic packaging and bags will be key to reducing waste going to landfill.

“Plastic bags and wrappers make up nearly a quarter of all plastic packaging that we use in our daily lives, yet only 6 per cent is recycled,” she said.

“Until we have consistent and comprehensive household collections across the nations, supermarkets play a critical role to enable customers to recycle key items not collected at home.”

Morrisons said it has already reduced own-brand plastic packaging by 8,000 tonnes since 2017 and aims to cut operational food waste by 50 per cent by 2030 as part of its ambitious drive to be greener and leaner.

Bosses said they are also encouraging big-name brands to do more to reduce their own levels of packaging, and that Morrisons was the first supermarket to ditch plastic bags in favour of paper ones.

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